


remind me of how we met

by insteadofjust_invisible



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Elia and Filo navigate being in a relationship, Established Relationship, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25743061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insteadofjust_invisible/pseuds/insteadofjust_invisible
Summary: “If there was one thing that bothered Elia about his relationship with Filippo it was the fact he didn’t remember how they had met. Which, in retrospect, didn’t say much about their relationship exactly, but rather about Elia, who was actually pretty sure Filippo knew how it had happened but loved to see him suffer and wouldn’t utter a single word about it.”in which Elia and Filippo have been dating for a few months when Elia discovers he doesn’t remember how he and his boyfriend had met.
Relationships: Elia Santini/Filippo Sava
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	remind me of how we met

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Elippo week.](https://elippoweek.tumblr.com) When I first made up my mind about writing for this initative, I hadn't realize I had never actually written Elippo before, but turns I hadn't, so I guess I'm not quite there yet with writing them as a couple or even Elia and Filippo individually as characters, but still. Elia characterization was more inspired by the somewhat softer side of him we saw in s4, take that as you will.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy it! :)

If there was one thing that bothered Elia about his relationship with Filippo it was the fact he didn’t remember how they had met. Which, in retrospect, didn’t say much about their relationship exactly, but rather about Elia, who was actually pretty sure Filippo knew how it had happened but loved to see him suffer and wouldn’t utter a single word about it.

The worst part of it all was that Elia has a good memory. He remembered the most useless shit without having to try, things people had said in passing during a conversation, back at school he would get better grades than even Gio in history, and, most importantly, he remembered how he had met all of the Contrabbandieri and even le Matte.

He and Gio met through Peccio. He had forgotten to finish his Latin homework and when he asked Peccio, his deskmate at the time, if he could share, Peccio had turned around and asked the boy with curly hair and bright blue eyes if his buddy Elia here could also copy his. ‘Yeah, just change some of the translation so we don’t get caught. And retribute the favor sometime, eh?’ Elia had nodded in response, already halfway through the first question, and from that day on they had exchanged homework - and a hell lot more - more often than not. From there, the rest was history.

He and Marti met through Gio, of course, not even five minutes after Elia had met Gio, actually. Marti had come into the classroom running, claiming there was traffic on Carini, and what a lucky bastard he was that their teacher had let him in. He unceremoniously dropped himself by Gio and didn’t grab his books for a good 15 minutes after that. From there, the rest was history.

He and Eva met at the end of that same Latin class. She had come in late right at Marti’s heels, - later he learned they took the same bus to school - sat behind Gio and Marti, and, at the end of class, easily roped herself right into their conversation after planting a kiss on Gio’s cheek. ‘This is Eva, my girlfriend,’ was how Gio introduced her, and then Marti completed that she was one of his best friends too, and that was it. From there, the rest was history.

He and Luca met in Greece the summer between third and fourth year when half the school decided to spend a week full of sunbathing and water fighting and drinking as far away from their parents as they could. The drinking part of that trip was actually what fuzzed his memory a bit, but he still remembers. It was theirs - his, Gio’s and Marti’s - second day there, they were at a bar close to their hotel, they got kicked out of said bar for being too loud, and then they ended up crossing paths with another group of guys on the street. Among that other group was a short guy with blond hair and blue eyes trying to squeeze himself shut inside of a travel bag. From there, the rest was history.

He and the rest of la Matte met through Eva at a party in Edoardo Incanti’s house (it might’ve been at Canegallo’s house too, that part he wasn’t so sure about because, well, it was party) sometime after she and the girls first became friends and her relationship with Gio was going downhill. He didn’t start to actually get to know the girls until that Christmas party at Marti’s, for the radio, when Ele had just come back from England and Filo had come with her to meet Nico in person, but eventually, he did. They all got to know each other better and their group startled to mix and mingle to the point where they were always partying together and studying together and travelling together like one big group and not la Matte and i Contrabbandieri. From there, the rest was history.

He might get away saying he had met Filo at that same Christmas party, but the thing is, he doesn’t think they talked that night, so, technically, they didn’t meet there. After all, Filippo had left not too long after Eleonora arrived, claiming he had a hot date to get to or something. For all Elia knew, that was probably true too. So, it had not really been at that party, not in the ways that matter, but sometime between then and halfway through spring when suddenly he was hanging out with the Contrabbandieri all the time, they had met. Properly met, that is, a meeting that warranted introductions and small talk that escalated to them becoming roommates and then boyfriends.

And Elia could not remember how that went down.

“What’s up?”

Elia was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear the door opening or Filippo dropping himself on the couch next to him. He gestured it was nothing, but of course the other boy read right through it and started laughing.

“You're still not over that?” Filo asked. He truly was having a field day - week - with this.

“I just want to remember it!”

“If I tell you, will it help?”

Elia rolled his eyes, but agreed. It wouldn’t be a first hand account, Filippo would probably embellish or exaggerate at every other detail, but maybe it would help him remember for himself. He didn’t even understand why he was so up in his head about this.

But Filo didn’t start right away. 

“Well…?” Elia proded, earning a devilish grin in response. 

“Oh, you meant now? I was hoping we could at least have dinner first,” he said, slapping at his tights as he got up from the couch. He was doing it on purpose. Standing, Filo extended a hand out to Elia, who let out an annoyed huff out as he accepted the help. Dinner first it was.

Filippo wasn’t the best cook (somehow, he was better than Eleonora though, which completely baffled Elia, because, well, it was not that Filo wasn’t the best cook, he was actually a terrible cook), which meant that Elia was the one doing all the chopping and cooking while his boyfriend babbled on and on. Pietro had had a great idea for a fundraising for the center, he couldn’t give much details now, but he would need Elia’s help, his Ethics professor was a bastard and the guy was teaching Ethics, Elia, Ethics!!! When he had no ethics himself, whatsoever, but his class on race, gender and the media was really interesting and the professor was really open to them introducing new topics of discussion, and Eleonora and Edo were coming to visit that weekend, was he up for a double date? In the end, it was a welcomed distraction. Elia still didn’t know why he was so pressed about figuring this whole first meeting thing out, and maybe Filippo wouldn’t be as much of a help as he hoped for, but maybe that was also not as important as he was making it all be. He loved Filo and that was what mattered, right? Who cares how they had met? (Elia did. He goddamn did.) Their relationship was one of the best things that had happened to him, regardless of how it started. (Because of how it started?)

After dinner, plates set on the coffee table - because, according to Filippo, eating at the table like most people do was too... un-homely, so they never had their meals there, it was always at the couch or the bed or balcony table (that one was not a real table, whatever that meant) - Elia settled in more comfortably on the couch, body turned towards Filo, feet resting on his lap.

“So…” he trailed out, the invitation clear. The other boy rolled his eyes at him, but made himself more comfortable as well, hands starting to draw meaningless patterns on his shins.

“Oh my God, you are insufferable,” Filo mocked, the fake annoyed tone of voice he used whenever he wanted to rile Martino up. It always worked with him, but with Elia, it always just made him smile. Today was no different.

“You love me.”

Elia was sure he heard a whispered ‘that I do’ that got muffled by his yelp as Filo poked him on the ribs, breaking into a smirk that seriously made him want to forget everything else and kiss him senseless. He suspected that was a known fact too, given the eyebrow raise he received before his boyfriend started, all too serious: “Ok. We met at that bar in San Giovanni where they hold the drag queen contests - 

“We did not!”

“Shush!!! You asked me to tell you, and I’m telling you we met there, and the reason why you don’t remember it is because you were drunk out of your mind and probably high too, now that I think of it. You did manage to pull off an incredible performance though. What was your drag name? That’s the one thing I can’t remember...”

“Fi…” Elia pleaded, head falling backwards toward the couch. Filo chuckled, as he somehow had delivered that story without faltering, but relented. 

“Sorry, love, I couldn’t resist. We met at that field where you guys play soccer, on a weekend in February or early March of last year.”

“Oh, I thought it had been earlier than that.”

“We had crossed paths before that, obviously, and I knew who you were, but I think Marti was trying to keep us from meeting.” Elia nodded at that, which was a known fact they had wiggled out of Marti once, who had said he was afraid of having the two parts of his life, whatever that meant, meet. He knew the boys fully supported him, but Filippo was definitely nothing like him and he wasn’t sure how they would feel around him. Of course, he was on the receiving end of a soccer ball for that insinuation. The Contrabbandieri also stepped up their game to show their full support to the queer community, almost to an overkill, but they finally got the message across. “Anyways, I was supposed to have lunch with him and Nico, you guys had a game that morning, and I had a shift at the center, but that ended earlier than expected, so I went to meet them at the field and Marti couldn’t escape it then. He introduced us after the game was over. You fainted on the spot. It had been your dream since you first saw me at Fede’s birthday party to meet Eleonora’s elusive, dashing gay brother.”

“I will ignore all of that last part,” Elia retorted, with an eye roll of his own. That was… anticlimactic? He doesn’t know what else he was expecting though, it really wasn’t like he fell head over heels for Filippo from the start, regardless of what his boyfriend claimed “and then, uh, next weekend you were partying with us, right?”

“If I remember it right, you guys were partying with me, it was a uni party I had invited Marti to, but yeah. From there on, you remember everything, I guess?” he inquired, carefully observing Elia. Did he expect a different reaction from him after hearing the story? Maybe it was Elia himself who expected to react differently, or maybe he expected a whole different story to begin with, which, again, didn’t make much sense, because deep down he knew it had been with the guys, on a random day in a non-memorable way, but still. It was not like his mind made much sense lately.

“Not what you expected, uh?”

“I don’t know. I just really couldn’t place it, but now I do. It’s… good to know.”

Filippo nodded at that, still surveying Elia, and, as he moved closer to the other boy on the couch, went on to ask “why is it so important for you to know?”

“This is my thing, you know? Remembering useless facts about people. The guys are always asking me ‘who is that again, where do we know them from’ or my mom always checks in with me what she should get my aunt for her birthday because I’ll remember something she mentioned in passing the last time we visited, and, I don’t know, it felt kind of wrong? Messed up? That I couldn’t remember how  _ we _ met.”

Throughout his explanation, Filo kept an unwavering gaze on Elia, a small smile gracing his lips. There was so much understanding and appreciation in his eyes that he felt a tiny bit more justified in insisting on this thing so much. 

“You are good now though, right? We are good?” he asked. Elia smiled back, in full.

“We were never not good, Filo.”

Silence fell on them and they basked on it for a few minutes, but it was starting to get late and they probably needed to clean up and head to bed soon. However, as Elia moved to stand up, Filippo placed a hand on his chest, making him fall back against the couch. He hadn’t noticed, but now Filo was the one deep in thought, head slightly turned toward the ceiling as he bit on his lip - a rare habit Elia knew meant he was nervous about something.

“Elia…” he started, the hand that was still resting lightly on Elia’s chest falling to his lap “I know I was a pain in the ass about this, but we can have serious conversations, ok? I’m not… I can be serious. I was just really amused about all of this, and I guess I hadn’t seen this side of you yet.”

Oh. This hadn’t been their first serious conversation, had it? Filippo had freaked out on him a few times about things going wrong for events at the center, or about Eleonora, or that time he awkwardly told him about his HIV scare. That one wasn’t really a conversation though, and they weren’t really a couple yet, Elia had just started to explore the idea he might be bi and gone to Filippo for advice and that was one advice that needed to be given. Apparently Marti and Nico both had had that awkward conversation-monologue with him too. Either way, it was not like he didn’t know his boyfriend couldn’t be serious. He was their - la Matte, the Contrabbandieri, and even Edoardo’s - go-to person, after all. 

“I know that,” he started, taking a deep breath to organize his thoughts and decide on what to say next “Fi, you seriously can’t see it? We have had serious conversations before. About rent or you freaking out because of Eleonora… Remember that time when she told you she was moving out for good? Yeah. Or when you come home and need to vent about uni or the center. I guess they just have never been about us. But I do know that, ok?” as Elia spoke, Filippo nodded, but he didn’t look all that convinced. Elia doubted he had made it clear how much he and everyone else appreciated his boyfriend, but he wasn’t sure of how to say it either. There was something else he could say though, to take things into somewhat lighter territory again, or at least into a territory they both knew how to deal with “and I didn’t mean to turn this into a serious thing. I know I said I wanted to remember because it is my thing, but I don’t even know if that was really it or if it even made sense for me to be freaking out so much about it.”

“First meetings are important. Especially with people we love. It was not too much or whatever, and it is your thing. I do appreciate how you can remember ‘useless’ details about people and facts, like you put it.”

There, Filippo was back into his usual spot of comforting others instead of being comforted. That was something Elia needed to work on, being a serious support system to someone who was so often in that position, especially someone as important as Filippo was, but that was a task for another night, another day.

“Now you’re being a sap.”

“As long as I’m your sap,” Filippo replied, licking at Elia’s cheek.

“Ugh, Filo!!!” The half-hearted complaint fell to short ears, because there was Filo again, tongue out threatening to lick him once more. If only he was trying to lick at another part of his body... Pushing a pillow in between himself and his boyfriend, Elia shook his head at the situation - their laughter could be heard from the street.

He and Filo met through Marti after a soccer game one weekend during their last semester of school. Marti had finally introduced them that day after several casual encounters where they had both been at the same party or café or wherever, but had never been properly introduced. Somewhere along the line, they became acquaintances, then roommates, then friends, then boyfriends. Boyfriends who could have serious conversations and easy conversations and funny conversations and random conversations and heartfelt conversations.

From there, the rest was history.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come say hi to me on [my tumblr!](https://aspeckof-stardust.tumblr.com/)


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